The Moos Room™

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Brad
Welcome to the Moose Room. Brad and Emily here today. Finally again.

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Emily
Reunite.

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Brad
You don't have to listen to either of us by ourselves. So we are here in the frozen north. It is 20 below zero 45 below windchill in Minnesota. And it's cold, but like I told our guest, Mike Guernsey is still alive when I went out and fed her today. So if she can survive, anybody can. We are good.

00;00;41;29 - 00;00;46;15
Brad
We are good. Not not to bash the Guernsey's, but hey, everybody's alive.

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Emily
Not everybody is as cold hardy as a Holstein, right? That is.

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Brad
Great. That is. That is right. So we have a guest today and our guest is Katie Schmidt. She is from the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding. So welcome, Katie.

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Katie
Thanks for having me, Brad and Emily. It's great to be here.

00;01;07;05 - 00;01;18;07
Brad
And Katie is a Minnesota native, so but she doesn't live in Minnesota. But it's still cold where she's at, so she's probably grateful that she's not having to experience this lovely weather.

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Katie
I'm very grateful. I feel for my parents who are milking cows in this weather in Minnesota this morning, and I am glad to be in an office today.

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Emily
Yeah, and I'll maybe just chime in for our listeners that are like, Katie Schmidt, is it? Yes, this would be the Schmidt's of Rama Holsteins. For our dairy folks listening in rice. So yes, this this is that Katie. You know, four of our Princess K finalists in Minnesota. So, you know, we're we're really excited to have kind of, you know, somebody that a lot of folks in Minnesota know, but it's been really exciting.

00;01;51;27 - 00;02;13;27
Emily
You know, for me, Katie, we've been friends a long time just to watch you go out and do other things with your career. Formerly with World Dairy Expo, now with the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding. So lots of exciting stuff happening, for for you, Katie. And and I know I'm excited to learn a little more about what you're doing now with Ccdc DCB.

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Emily
But before we get there, we do have our super secret questions. That we ask all of our guests. And, you know, our listeners know there are no wrong answers, despite what Bradley may say. And so your first question, Katie and Brad keeps track of the answers. So your first question is, what is your favorite breed of beef cattle?

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Katie
Ooh, a beef cattle. I'm glad you didn't ask me about dairy cows, because I don't think I'm allowed to have a favorite. I personally do, but professionally, I'm not allowed to, but beef cows? I really love the, like, little Carmel calves. So the the crossbred calves that are like Charlie, sire, and, a red, Angus dam.

00;03;02;23 - 00;03;07;28
Katie
And they come out, they look like they're caramel colored. So those are my favorite. Am I allowed to pick cross breads?

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Emily
Yes.

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Katie
You are. Okay. Great. Absolutely. That's that's what it is, then. I love the caramel and the smokey calves.

00;03;13;23 - 00;03;17;23
Emily
Okay. Caramel calves love that.

00;03;17;25 - 00;03;47;03
Brad
Very good. So for our listeners, it's been a while since we have listed off the tallies. But here we go. Black Angus still number 119 Herford a close second 14 Black Baldy five Scottish Highlander five then Charlotte four. Red Angus four will count Carmel cabs as those together. Shorthorn three semi tall, two belted Galloway two, Brahma two and all with one stabilizer.

00;03;47;03 - 00;03;54;22
Brad
Galvin Keanna Naylor a jersey, Belgian Blue Brangus, Piedmontese white park and miniature Scottish Highlander.

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Katie
Oh my gosh, that is a long list.

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Emily
Of.

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Katie
Breed options that I could have picked from and what I had friends alongside me.

00;04;02;03 - 00;04;10;18
Brad
Exactly. It is, it is. But the audience always knows that the correct answer is Herford. But alas, we.

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Emily
That's Brad's correct answer. Yes.

00;04;12;04 - 00;04;12;29
Brad
That's right.

00;04;13;01 - 00;04;22;01
Emily
Okay, so now we do move on to the second question now, Katie. So we, we might be putting you in a sticky spot here professionally.

00;04;22;03 - 00;04;27;15
Brad
You can answer from a personal standpoint, we won't fire you. We won't fire you.

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Emily
What is your favorite breed of dairy? Kentucky. Well, it's happening. Yeah.

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Katie
Well, I I'm glad I get to support all of the dairy breeds, through my work at Ccdc, but I am partial. I am the proud owner of a few registered Holsteins. And my first one just went excellent this week, so, pretty excited about my first breeding note animal to make that accomplishment.

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Emily
Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. All right, so I write, and I kind of knew the Holstein was coming. Of course, it had to be in her family. Have a long history of being really excellent Holstein breeders. So congrats on that. Excellent, Katie. And I know Bradley, you are probably sad that Holsteins get another tally, but where are we at now?

00;05;12;26 - 00;05;37;26
Brad
That's right, Holstein still at number 126 Jersey. The correct answer is 20. So close behind Brown Swiss 13. Montville yard three. Dutch Belted three. Guernsey three, Ayrshire three, Milking Shorthorn three and Normandy two. So not as many variety of dairy cattle as what we see on beef, but.

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Katie
There are fewer options there.

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Brad
Yeah, there are fewer options. There are fewer options. So it's always a fun little way to, break the ice and see what everybody's favorite are. You never know what's going to happen.

00;05;48;15 - 00;05;59;07
Katie
No, I was expecting those, super secret crazy questions at the end of the episode, not the beginning. So this was a great surprise for me, right?

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Emily
You. Well, you know, we we like to get you warmed up right away.

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Katie
I you know what? On a cold day gets good. It's good.

00;06;04;25 - 00;06;11;24
Emily
Yes. And, you know, now we have the fun stuff out of the way. So, so we can move on to the business side of things. Right, Bradley?

00;06;11;27 - 00;06;35;22
Brad
That's right. So we wanted to talk to Katie a little bit today about what the Council of Dairy Cattle Breeding is, and then talk a little bit about some of the new things that are happening with merit and the base change that is going to happen in the dairy cattle industry here in April. So, Katie, tell us a little bit about the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding.

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Brad
What is it? What do you do for those folks that might not know what we all hear about the acronym KB? But do people really know what what that is?

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Katie
Yeah. So we can start at the beginning I think is maybe the logical place. So KB started out as a committee within the USDA. So we we got our roots back in the 1980s as a committee, and we functioned in there as like an advisory group to the to the USDA who was providing genetic evaluations to the US dairy producer.

00;07;08;25 - 00;07;40;21
Katie
In 2013, it was decided amongst the industry, that CDC would come out of the USDA and become its own standalone nonprofit entity. So in that transition period, the USDA still stayed involved on the research side of things, but it allowed CDC to take, management the managerial role. So, like the stewardship of the national cooperator database into the private sector, and away from the federal government.

00;07;40;21 - 00;08;11;06
Katie
So, basically just another level of protection for dairy farmer data that's stored in that national database. So as the, the stewards of this database, we are responsible for providing genetic evaluations for us dairy cattle and, dairy cattle around the globe who provide genomic evaluations or who are looking for a genomic evaluation. So, we do everything from traditional, evaluations for milk, fat, protein, like the good pieces that we know and love.

00;08;11;09 - 00;08;42;16
Katie
But we also are doing evaluations for genomics. So we are the, the source of that data as the the home of the national cooperator database. So we work with, collaborative network across the industry, everyone from milk testers to dairy worker processing centers to the stud companies, to our genomic, folks who are out commercializing genomic testing, they're all a part of the big KB family, that we foster in order to support us dairy producers.

00;08;42;19 - 00;09;13;06
Brad
Yeah. And that's interesting because so if, if you're if a farmer is genotyping their dairy animals, it is going into CDC for genetic evaluation. And for our listeners, if you haven't known, just in December, we have surpassed 10 million genotypes into the CDC database, which that's a lot of animals. So 10 million animals in the US have been genotyped so far from multiple breeds to help make up these genomic evaluations.

00;09;13;06 - 00;09;15;08
Brad
So that's quite the feat.

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Katie
It is. And if we really want to blow people's mind. So we have 10 million genotypes, but there are 100 million animals represented in the national cooperative database on the phenotypic side. So the Cal performance data so that is even larger outside of the genotype space. That really started in 2008 with that first genomic evaluation for for our sires.

00;09;39;15 - 00;10;03;03
Brad
Yeah. So you keep evaluations and you run evaluations on bulls from the 1950s and 60s and cows that are still in the database. So that's how we get to that 100 million, which is quite interesting that those evaluations are still being calculated for those bulls. On a side note, I actually looked up some of those bulls because there is a semen auction going on for old bulls.

00;10;03;03 - 00;10;09;28
Brad
And I Brad is very interested in buying some of these old genetics, and I don't know why, but.

00;10;10;00 - 00;10;14;05
Katie
What what caught your eye? Like, what kind of, traits are we looking at for those guys?

00;10;14;05 - 00;10;37;16
Brad
I'm just interested in the health and fertility traits. I think some of those, obviously, the production is a lot less, but there are some of these bulls are a little bit better for health and maybe fertility, although their evaluations look negative and I'm nostalgic. And the Holstein breed. Yes. I do like the Holsteins. I'm. I like the old Holstein genetics.

00;10;37;19 - 00;10;53;01
Brad
So there are some bulls that I'm looking at that are were born in the late 50s. There's some semen on them available, and I think I can get it pretty cheap. And people will be like, well, you're crazy. What are you doing that for? But I don't know, just for fun, just to see what happens.

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Emily
Why not? Why not?

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Brad
Brad's the always. I always got some crazy ideas up my sleeve somewhere, so.

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Katie
Well, that's why I'm glad we have some information for you that you can look at the, and evaluate that semen, even though it's really old. So. Yeah, that's that's great. I hope it turns out.

00;11;12;26 - 00;11;45;09
Emily
Soon or, I guess kind of a clarification. You kind of alluded to this at the beginning, Katie, and something that I, I don't know, just like about counsel on dairy cattle breeding, it's not, like breed specific. Right. Like you have all this data across breeds. Yeah. And I think that's important. You know, in that I don't have to go to an individual breed association to get this information because we also know, right, we have a lot more farms that are running more than one breed or also have cross breeds.

00;11;45;09 - 00;11;57;18
Emily
And, you know, and I think being able to to see this data all together and to find it from one place versus each breed specific association, also has to have its advantages.

00;11;57;20 - 00;12;23;22
Katie
Yeah. And I think that's a great point that you're making, Emily. So, we work with the breed associations. They are one of our partners in the data collection side of things. So they are, obviously producing great pedigrees. We know so much about our registered animals, so we rely heavily on that really great parentage information that comes from the registered breed associations, but they're also the ones that are out collecting the information, scoring, an appraisal, scoring.

00;12;23;22 - 00;12;48;08
Katie
So, what we use to build type evaluations and CCB in our function as a pre competitive entity, we do provide those services for all the breeds. But I do want to clarify that Holstein still does their own type evaluations. So we are not responsible for those calculations. That breed association still maintains that, duty in the space of genetics.

00;12;48;10 - 00;13;02;11
Katie
So we do it for the other breeds, but not Holstein. But we still work closely with them to create merit and all of these other great, production traits, fertility, health traits. But they handle the the type.

00;13;02;13 - 00;13;26;26
Emily
Good to know. Thank you. I will say that you you said some magic words there which are net merit, which I know is something we did want to talk about today. You know, Bradley and I are kind of like net merit nerds. Some some people know this. Some people don't. And of course, we we are big supporters of the total merit competition at the Minnesota State Fair for the for each kids.

00;13;26;28 - 00;13;31;01
Emily
So let's maybe talk net merit for a little bit,

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Katie
Do it. Yeah, absolutely. So we can start with some of the basics of net merit. Right. So it started out in 1994. We've been doing some sort of index for a very long time and before that. But 1994 is when we see the introduction of net merit itself. Net Merit is one of four lifetime merit indexes that are produced by the CDCr.

00;13;54;09 - 00;14;23;14
Katie
So we have net merit cheese, merit grazing merit and fluid merit. And it's important to to know that there are other options beyond that merit, depending on what your milk market looks like. So net merit is our best estimation of how to create a profitable cow, based on income and expenses. And thanks to great input from our research friends at extension entities across the country, but if you are selling in.

00;14;23;14 - 00;14;24;03
Emily
A.

00;14;24;05 - 00;14;50;07
Katie
Milk market that is more fluid based fluid, it's going to kind of shift the emphasis within that merit index to away from components more to fluid side and allow you to, to really utilize an index that fits your breeding program and your, your market at the end of the day. So the, the lifetime merit indexes and we'll talk about merit specifically today.

00;14;50;09 - 00;15;16;27
Katie
But they are all being updated in April of 2025. So on April 1st, a nice little April Fool's Day prank. We are going to make some big changes to net merit. And really, what we're seeing, in terms of changes from the current one that was last done in 2021. We are not adding any new traits, but we are adjusting the economic values and the economic weights of traits within it.

00;15;16;27 - 00;15;37;00
Katie
So, we're going to see a decrease in protein and an increase in fat, based on how milk markets are playing out today and what is expected by the experts over the coming years. And then we're also seeing, a decrease in productive life and an increase in livability, which reflects the coal prices that we're seeing today.

00;15;37;03 - 00;15;50;14
Katie
So it's more about keeping an animal alive, but she has more values, a cold cow at the end. So some of those shifts are what we're going to see play out in this new net market revision coming April 1st, 2025.

00;15;50;16 - 00;16;14;21
Brad
And CDC also calculates a residual feed intake. So this is feed saved for and it helps, improve the efficiency of of our dairy animals. And I see there's going to be more weight on a feed saved or residual feed intake in the index as well to help provide more efficiency or more feed efficient animals into the future.

00;16;14;23 - 00;16;37;25
Katie
Yes, absolutely. So yes, feed saved is a combined trait of residual feed and residual feed intake and body weight composite. So, when we look at the net merit formula, we really talk about residual feed intake and body weight composite, as separate traits within it. But yeah, it ends up being feed saved in that feed efficiency component.

00;16;37;27 - 00;16;57;09
Brad
And there's less. Well, actually, I should say there's more weight on body weight composite in turn, which makes a little bit more medium sized cows or it doesn't. It prevents the cows from getting any bigger, I should say, even though I think they're still getting bigger than what we maybe want them to. That's Brad's opinion.

00;16;57;12 - 00;17;19;07
Katie
Rather than Brad's a lot of to have an opinion. Yes. Yes, exactly. We talk about it right. Is relative emphasis and that. Right. So that relative emphasis for body weight composite is growing. But it is a negative number in the the general census of things. So smaller cows and more moderate cows, can be more feed efficient or we find are more feed efficient.

00;17;19;07 - 00;17;44;23
Katie
So we do see that shift. And obviously there are other indexes out in the industry. If people aren't, you know, feeling the, the scientific like these are economic weights and they're all related to correlation ones. CDC is is here to provide information. We're not going to tell you how to breed your cows. And if, if what we have available isn't lining up, you know, there's other great index options through Holstein.

00;17;44;23 - 00;18;03;27
Katie
What they're TPI or through, competitive entities and genetic organizations out in the, the industry landscape. So there's really something for everybody. But it does come back to those base traits that are produced by CDC, regardless of of what index you're going to utilize. At the end of the day.

00;18;03;29 - 00;18;32;12
Brad
And I think it's good that we always try to keep these indexes up to date to help reflect the milk market at the time, the culling market at the time, and as well as what farmers are trying to breed for in their herd or just where the overall industry is, is going. So it's always good to update these from time to time just to, get us back to square one and see where where the industry is going and, and where we might want to head in the future.

00;18;32;15 - 00;18;56;11
Katie
Exactly. Yeah. So this is updated every couple of years usually. Often it's because we're adding a new trait or a new trait group. But, every once in a while we do it just because of, a realignment with the economics of the industry. And that's what we're seeing here. So, again, no new traits, but, a better reflection of the economic picture and landscape of our dairy farms today.

00;18;56;11 - 00;19;00;24
Katie
And we anticipate the next few years for good breeding decisions.

00;19;01;01 - 00;19;21;19
Emily
And I think that's, you know, an important part of it. We talk on this show a lot about, you know, management and also using the right tools to to make your management effective. And I think that's, you know, a piece of this is that these evaluations, these different things we're looking at, they're all tools for farmers to use.

00;19;21;19 - 00;19;48;02
Emily
So although it can feel like growing pains or like, oh my gosh, now the numbers are all changed or it looks totally different, you know, it's it's for a reason, right? Like you said, we need to be keeping up with what the economy is doing, with what other information we have available. And so although these, you know, these updates can feel like, oh my gosh, now, you know, all my numbers are wrong or everything gets skewed by this change.

00;19;48;04 - 00;20;09;16
Emily
You know, but remember, it is a tool and the best tools do get updated and change to keep up with what is happening in the field and in the industry. And so, you know, again, just thinking back to our ever, ever going theme of management, you know, these types of things are another management tool for producers to use as they make their decisions.

00;20;09;17 - 00;20;19;03
Emily
You know. So I think that's that's something we need to remember. Right? These updates aren't just done to inconvenience us. You know, they're done to make us better managers.

00;20;19;06 - 00;20;43;19
Katie
Yes, yes, definitely not done for inconvenience. And I think the other piece that I know we're going to get to at some point here is budget based change, which is also happening in April. And maybe this is the the perfect segue into it. And that's because, you know, we talk about updating tools like net merit, but every five years we also update essentially the zero point for how we measure genetic, traits.

00;20;43;19 - 00;21;06;19
Katie
So the Ta is predicted transmitting ability. And that update will be happening in April as well. So in addition to that merit, we're also going to see a major change in PTA values for all animals in April. And then we'll see more stability moving forward. But we need to readjust the genetic base, which is that zero point, of how we measure to.

00;21;06;25 - 00;21;32;03
Katie
So zero today is based off of the average PTA of a cow born in 2015. And after April, it will move to the average PTA of cows born in 2020. So think about it as like moving your start line of your race. And we do this to make sure that we can compare, fairly genetic progress and animals over time.

00;21;32;03 - 00;21;56;00
Katie
So Brad's bull from back in the 1950s, right. He is being compared to cows of 2015 today. So not to compare bulls today or cows today to animals from the 1950s. Using them as our base is a really hard tool to utilize because it just looks like we have massive amounts of progress and the variation in traits becomes too great.

00;21;56;00 - 00;22;17;11
Katie
So if we update our base, we change our zero, and we give ourselves a new starting point, we can make a little bit more informed decisions based off of contemporary cows today. And that's what we're going to see happen in April. As well. So I don't know if you guys want to talk about, you know, what those numbers really start to look like because they are large in some cases.

00;22;17;13 - 00;22;19;11
Katie
And people will see that.

00;22;19;13 - 00;22;39;01
Brad
Yeah, they are a significant I, I have it here. And because sometimes it will alarm farmers when they go, well, why did my cow drop so much or why did my this bull that I'm using, how come it's 1,000 pounds less in milk now than what it was last month? So that's one of the things to know that.

00;22;39;03 - 00;23;01;20
Brad
So these values are readjusted. I think if we look at it from a Holstein basis, Holstein is 750 on milk. So we'll readjust those. The PTA for the Holsteins will go down for milk production. Just because we're comparing with that new start line. You know, this is ten years old. We're comparing to 2015. Now that seems ancient. Okay.

00;23;01;20 - 00;23;09;25
Brad
So so it'll be nice to update these, but some of those values will go down specifically for milk fat and protein. Definitely.

00;23;09;28 - 00;23;33;10
Katie
Yeah. And if we have estimations of what we expect those changes to look like and they're available at us, CDC Bbc.com so people can go and look at that. And Brad, you mentioned that 750, point difference between 2015 and 2020 cows. And that is an estimation today. So it will be a little different when we do final numbers in April.

00;23;33;15 - 00;23;59;08
Katie
But it hopefully gives people a ballpark idea. And I think the the piece that breeders need to remember and farmers need to remember is that as these pitas shift due to the base change, is to think about how it might impact thresholds that you have in place for breeding selections today. So if you require that your bowl, that you're using for your mating programs, be plus a thousand in milk for easy math, right.

00;23;59;10 - 00;24;26;14
Katie
The same bowl in April is going to only be plus 250 roughly. So he's going to automatically get kicked out. He's no worse than he was in December. He sees no different as a general consensus. Right. But all of a sudden he doesn't qualify for your breeding selections. So knowing how those numbers are going to play into thresholds that you have in place of how you're making decisions are really important, to be prepared for April for that.

00;24;26;21 - 00;24;47;07
Brad
So basically, what you're telling me is that my bowl that I'm selecting from the 1960s and I'll say is Don auger two type model, that's that's his name. He is very good for fertility. So he's going to go from -3900 milk to almost 4,000 pounds of milk. But he might improve even better for fertility.

00;24;47;07 - 00;25;13;25
Katie
So yes, he, he could he could write. And all of this is like reliant on CDC be getting good performance data from cows. Right. So we can predict evaluations. We have to write predicted transmitting ability. We can calculate genomic evaluations based off of an animal's DNA. But we need to make sure that farmers in the US are committed to also contributing a phenotype.

00;25;13;25 - 00;25;39;21
Katie
So cow performance data, to the national database through these channels that have been established for more than 100 years, so that we can support the reliability of these evaluations. So I don't want to like underscore or the importance of that piece in this conversation as we talk about change and new tools and evolution. That at the end of the day, it still is based off of performance of cows today.

00;25;39;24 - 00;25;45;17
Katie
And that will be the base in 2030 when we adjust this again would be the cows born this year.

00;25;45;19 - 00;26;07;21
Brad
So it's always good to know that all of the data flows through. Whether your genomic testing d testing is, is pretty important to getting all of these evaluations on these bulls and cows. It is. And people farmers might actually not know this. Only about 50% of the cows in the US are on some sort of milk recording scheme, which is.

00;26;07;28 - 00;26;08;28
Katie
Yeah.

00;26;09;00 - 00;26;29;16
Brad
In my mind it's it's really low. If we go to European countries, they're much higher 90% or higher. So only about 50% of the cows really are doing some sort of milk recording. So that's important. To get good evaluations is to have this phenotypic data that goes into the system. So that's where it all comes in to help the farmers into the future.

00;26;29;18 - 00;26;55;24
Katie
Yeah. And it's not just even milk recording right. So there are also cows that are on milk recording but don't have their data processed at a data record processing center and or have checked the box to not share their data with CDC. So, I would encourage listeners who are producers, consultants, you know, go and look at your D, records and talk to your D field service, and find out if you are contributing that data or not.

00;26;55;27 - 00;27;21;18
Katie
Because it is what we build good genetic evaluations off of. And it's what makes our system in the US so important and so strong globally. But in 2023, we still had 3.9 million cows in the database. That contributed new data that year. So we say 50%, it's a little less. And it still is a massive number in the grand scheme of like global dairy populations.

00;27;21;18 - 00;27;38;13
Katie
So our evaluations are strong. They're healthy. They're good. But we just need to make sure we start having that conversation about the importance of contributing data moving forward and to continue that, that data flow, for the sake of our evaluations.

00;27;38;15 - 00;28;02;16
Brad
I think, and that's that's important to help with making sure that the data keeps flowing from the farms to CDC and and from other sources, because it really helps in bringing about new traits. So as we sort of wrap up, we won't discuss these a lot, but what are some new traits that are coming along in the future that the data from farmers is is going to help present to the industry.

00;28;02;18 - 00;28;24;22
Katie
Right. Great question. So, we work on research of new traits alongside USDA Animal Genomics and Improvement Laboratory. So this is a cohesive cohort of projects. But we are getting close to getting calf health traits across the finish line. And that is based off of the farmer data that's been submitted over the years without it being a trait.

00;28;24;22 - 00;28;47;23
Katie
So preemptively, they're submitting that data, and that allows us to get that trait across the finish line pretty quickly. Now that the research is completed, but we're also going to be adding shortly milking speed for dairy cows, based off of quantitative data. So off of in line, sensor information, we can actually create a milking speed trait taste based off of hard data.

00;28;47;25 - 00;29;21;07
Katie
And not simply someone saying, well, she milks faster, she milks slower. She's she's average, which is what is currently available in some breeds. And so we're going to see an evolution of that. And we are currently working on as well some revisions to the fertility traits. So a review of our current traits in DPR, CCR so cow conception rate and HCR, which we have for conception rate, but we're also, approaching the close to implementation of a new fertility trait as well, called first service to conception.

00;29;21;07 - 00;29;44;05
Katie
So, these are all exciting traits that are really close. And then we're also working on, a mobility and health health trait that is linked to novel camera data. So that's a new data source for us to be working with. And then of course, enteric methane emissions through the greener cattle Initiative and, heat stress, like the amount of projects that are happening right now is, is mind blowing.

00;29;44;05 - 00;29;53;24
Katie
And we could talk for hours about them all, but, that is kind of the the quick snapshot of the, the big ones that are close to hitting that finish line.

00;29;53;26 - 00;30;12;06
Brad
And it's always good to see that the data that farmers are collecting or that are, that are going to help the industry and bring about these new traits. So I think it's it's fascinating to see all of this in place, and it will it will no doubt help farmers better manage their herds into the future.

00;30;12;08 - 00;30;32;24
Emily
Yes, the parlor efficiency nerd in me is very excited about this milking speed trade. I'm like, oh, this is going to be cool. So yeah, it's just interesting to know what you know, what we can expect to be to be coming. Right. And and we know knowledge is power. And as we're able to gather more and more data points, it's like put them to use.

00;30;32;24 - 00;30;47;19
Emily
And so that's why I, you know, it's exciting to see that we can use this data to create these new benchmarks for new traits. And, and you know, just expand again, the tools we have available to us as we make these management decisions.

00;30;47;21 - 00;31;10;02
Katie
Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, a great resource for tools. I'm going to put a quick plug in here. We do our monthly newsletter through Ccdc web called the CDC connection. So people are looking for that kind of information. Those regular routine monthly updates on research projects, on changes to coming to the evaluations, on a triennial basis.

00;31;10;05 - 00;31;27;27
Katie
Any of like those big things that are happening in this genetics space and you're looking for from a indepen dent nonprofit lens, CDC connection, you can sign up at us CDC Bbc.com, and we'll only email you monthly. We will not spam your inbox, I promise.

00;31;27;27 - 00;31;44;22
Emily
Yeah. So again, that's us, the CDC bbc.com. And if you go to that website, there is a bright blue bar across the top that says subscribe for monthly news. So I assume you just click that and you can get signed up for those emails. So they make it very easy.

00;31;44;24 - 00;31;45;14
Katie
That's the one.

00;31;45;14 - 00;31;47;11
Emily
Absolutely perfect.

00;31;47;12 - 00;31;52;19
Brad
And and it provides good information on what's happening and, and how we're moving forward.

00;31;52;21 - 00;32;10;13
Emily
All right. Well I think we will wrap it there. Thank you so much, Katie. For for joining us today on The newsroom. I know I learned a lot. I am excited to sign up for the CD, CV newsletter because I have not been signed up. So thank you so much, Katie, for coming.

00;32;10;16 - 00;32;18;22
Katie
Well, thank you both for having me. It's been a pleasure to get back to my Minnesota roots for the day. And share some news about Ktvb.

00;32;18;25 - 00;32;46;07
Emily
Awesome. Well, thank you again, Katie. And if you have any questions, comments or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, you can email those to the newsroom at Umkc. Edu, you can find us on the web extension.um.edu. And again you can find the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding on the web at u s c d c b.com. We will wrap that episode there.

00;32;46;09 - 00;32;55;08
Emily
We look forward to, joining you all again next week. Thank you all. Goodbye.